Scarlett Johansson has been through quite a lot this past year: a divorce from Ryan Reynolds, a photo scandal, and a “challenging” relationship with Sean Penn. And now she’s finally talking about all three!

“I’ve had ups and downs,” the star told Access Hollywood. “Certainly, this past year has been a lot of unexpected things in many beautiful ways, many challenging ways.”

The single actress learned a great lesson through it all: “You just have to kind of embrace it. For me, the most important thing is that it doesn’t affect my work and it doesn’t affect my private life as much as possible.”

Scarlett Johansson told Cosmopolitan‘s January issue that saying “I do” to Ryan Reynolds was “the best thing I ever did.”

“I’m a big believer that when something feels right, you should do it,” she told the magazine. “I’m a big believer in instinct. Getting married was the right thing to do because it was natural. It grew out of a romance and love and a desire to have a future with somebody, and I was very fortunate that I married somebody who turned out to be the person I thought he would be.”

So why the divorce?

“Relationships are complicated,” she mused. “Being married is a living, breathing process. I think I was not fully aware of the peaks and the valleys. I wasn’t prepared to hunker down and do the work… Both of us were extremely busy. We spent so much time apart. It’s very difficult.”

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